


lemon king

by www_bl00dgod_com



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dream Smp, Gen, Sleepy Bois Inc Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:01:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29985351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/www_bl00dgod_com/pseuds/www_bl00dgod_com
Summary: a deadly disease has taken over, the king has been overthrown, and most are just fighting to survive. a common goal means common interests, a chance to stick together, maybe even friendships and happiness, but what if happiness is the exact opposite of what you need?p.s. this is my first post here so i dont really know how it works and sorry if i mess it up. obviously there is no shipping or anything and if any ccs are uncomfortable with it, i'll take it down as soon as i find out. i'll try and upload weekly but honestly who knows.tw for death and suicide (there will be a tw at the beginning of the chapter)
Kudos: 2





	lemon king

one minute he wasn’t there, then he was. Phil looked up from his book that was laying on the kitchen table and, seeing one glowing red eye, grabbed his dagger from a strap on his leg. “out, get out”, the stranger had made him jump, but he wasn’t about to show that. “no, no stop please, I’m not what you think I am.” Phil looked questioningly at the tall person that had literally just appeared out of thin air is his basement. “what do you mean, there’s literally no other explanation for this.” The person tentatively opened their other eye and blinked slowly at the man, “see, only one of them’s red, I’m safe”  
Phil nodded and sunk back into his chair; still slightly uneasy, he motioned for the stranger to sit down in a chair opposite. With a small nod, the strange eyed person sat down and slowly bought his eyes up to the blond. “my name’s ranboo by the way, yours?” “I’m Phil. Are you army, military, where do you come from” Ranboo held his hands up in front of his face as if he was trying to shield himself from the questions, “I don’t work for the army, military or government. I work for myself and I don’t remember where I come from”  
Phil narrowed his eyes suspiciously, he was nice and wanted to help, but he also wanted to make sure than Ranboo wouldn’t put an immediate wanted sign on his head. “what do you mean you don’t remember where you come from?” “exactly what it sounds like; I pretty much have no memories from before about a year ago. Here I can show you my memory book, it helps me keep track of important things I need to remember.”  
He passed an old-looking, leather bound book across the table to the blond who picked it up and opened it to read. What he saw however, confused him. “what’s this?” he showed the open page to Ranboo who squinted slightly and sighed. “don’t know, I didn’t write it.” Phil looked confused, “you didn’t write it? But isn’t this your memory book, shouldn’t you have written it?” Ranboo looked slightly amused. “that was the idea but someone stole it and messed with it.” Phil nodded and continued flipping through the book. There was a page titled ‘gone’ which contained a list of names that covered the whole page with multiple columns. Phil looked at it sadly and flipped to another page with the header ‘allies’.  
It was empty.  
The rest of the book contained accounts of the different things that had happened to the heterochromic person. Phil noticed that there were a lot of odd gaps inbetween words and a lot of plaes where words had been scribbled out so roughly the pen had broken through to the other side of the paper.  
Once he reached the end of the writings, he handed the book back to ranboo who placed it in an inside pocket of his jacket. “so, how and why are you in my basement, ranboo” Ranboo smiled slightly and began to speak, “well I can’t remember a lot of it but I do know that I was being chased, hunted even, most people don’t even try and understand me, they just see the red eye and kill me without even looking at the green one. My eyes have also been this colour since birth. The army have been chasing me almost non-stop for the last week but, every once in a while, if I’m very stressed, I randomly teleport. I apologise for the intrusion, I didn’t mean to come here and I can head off again if you don’t feel safe with me around.”  
phil shushed him with a finger to his lips and looked around, “well I don’t have much but feel free to stay here with me for however long you need.” “thank you, I’ll stay for the night but I’ll probably head off in the morning, it’s dangerous to stay still for too long” Phil nodded and stood up, beckoning the boy to follow him  
They walked down a corridor and into what was being used as a spare storage room, there were pieces of wood and crafting benches surrounding the walls but Phil hurried to place a makeshift bed in the middle of the room, away from splinters. Ranboo thanked him and layed down, pulling out his diary and a quil. Phil left the room, shaking his head gently in a confused manner, he was fascinated by the boy.  
The blond man walked back into the kitchen and sat down at the table, thinking. Other than Ranboo, he had another thing on his mind, the orphanage.  
Phil had also been keeping a diary but not being on the run from the government had meant that his was less rushed and had more accurate timings. 

03.06  
The first day, the first culprit. The police were called and he was taken to a hospital where he promptly died, not without passing it on to everyone he had contact with in the hospital and police station. They all started off the same as him, eyes glowing red and red veins seemingly crawling along the face, visible under the victim’s skin. They died soon after, within the hour and their corpse’s left no trace of the disease, the redness shrinking back into the eyes and then the eyes transforming back to their normal colour. 

04.06  
The king got de-throned, it’s hardly surprising. He was barely an adult and the minute people stormed the palace in fear and apparent protest to what was going on, he fled. No news on whether he’s still in the city and no-one’s seen him since the people entered the castle. It’s contagious and the government have called the army in to try and control the spread, they do this by shooting the minute they see a flash of red. This resulted in a lot of accidents and the people now hate the army. It’s only been one day since this whole thing started and it’s already gone so awfully wrong. 

06.06  
I’ve set up base in an abandoned basement under an orphanage. I can tell that everyone is still up there, but officials haven’t come knocking on their door yet and i’m sure I won’t be found, even if they do. The army hasn’t gained any popularity, still killing thousands of people in a day, many are accidents and they haven’t even wiped out the virus yet. 

10.06  
They know what causes the virus, there was a news leak of confidential information, it doesn’t specifically say what the cause is but the video released showed a government official talking about not telling the public because of fear. They mentioned fear a lot and some took it as a clue that maybe they were scared of the people rebelling out of fear. 

20.06  
So they weren’t scared of us rebelling. They finally told the public what’s wrong, emotions. Emotions are literally killing people, they are saying that the emotions are a virus, they are contagious and represented by the red in people’s eyes and the veins that cover their skin. 

21.06  
It’s turning into a massacre. The minute people found out, most people were terrified. Most of the population was literally obliterated within an hour just from the emotion of fear. Given the amount of screams from the orphanage upstairs, I don’t think they took the news too well. There became a huge obsession with people becoming ‘numb’. Some turned to drugs, thinking that they would help them not to feel. It worked at first but eventually there was too much demand and not enough supplies. Others decided to turn into ruthless criminals and there was so much murder and destruction on the streets, it looks like a warzone. 

22.06  
It’s not really safe to go on the streets much, most people have formed gangs and the rest of us hide in basements and shelters where we aren’t likely to be found. 

28.06  
I can leave my shelter safely now, I haven’t been affected since I had no friends or close family, feeling nothing is easy when you had no one to share your emotions with in the first place. Most of the gangs have ended up murdering everyone they see, I don’t know if they now think they are ‘numb enough’, bored of killing or if they have just decided that anyone who can survive for this long is worthy of staying alive.

30.06  
I visited the orphanage today. If there were any survivors, they’re long gone, the building is just full of blood and rotting corpses. I might try and see if any of them escaped and have been living on the streets. I took all the non-perishables, im assuming most grocery shops round here will be stripped clean and it’s not like anyone will be eating this food. They had a little garden out back and there were packs and packs of seeds in a chest of drawers by the back door. I took some and am planning on making a rooftop garden of sorts ontop of the building the orphanage is in, it’s a tall building but I can use the fire escape stairs to get to the top without going inside. 

1.07  
Ranboo comes to visit me every now and again, I like his company in the silence, and there’s a lot of that at the moment. He teleports in, we hang out and talk for a bit, and then he disappears again. I’ve planted the seeds on the roof with the tools from the orphanage, I figure I need a constant supply of food and it’ll be safer from thieves up there. There are quite a few tall buildings on the block and the roofs connect so there is actually a lot of space. People living here before the virus obviously had a similar idea to me, there are a variety of flowers and trees up there and an old, wooden bench sits, half-hidden, under one of the taller trees, looking out onto the skyline and, in the evenings, a beautiful sunset.

03.07  
I finally did it, I found someone from the orphanage. He’s just a boy and looks barely ten years old. I was walking the rubble-filled streets and turned down an alleyway. As I walked, I spotted a large cardboard box, resting against the brick wall of the building it was next to. I walked over to it and intended to pick it and and take it back to my shelter. However when I picked it up, it was heavier than I expected and I heard a yell from within, “bloody hell”. I immediately dropped the box from where I was holding it about a foot off the ground. I opened up the cardboard flaps and peered down to see a small, grubby boy sitting cross-legged in the bottom of the box. He tells me he’s from the orphanage and I decide to take him in, estimating he won’t live much longer if he is forced to stay out here alone. He has short blond hair and wears a white shirt with a red neckline and sleeves. He says his name is Tom but everyone at the orphanage just called him tommy. I take him back to the orphanage basement with me to keep him safe.

05.07  
Tommy’s starting to open up to me more, he seems reserved and scared of feeling too much. When I met him, he seemed like he was trying not to be too relieved and when I offered to take him home with me I watched him supress a smile. He told me he didn’t have any friends at the orphanage after becoming withdrawn with the disappearance of his parents. They never reached out to him and in turn he never reached out to them. This led to him already feeling sort of numb. The minute the orphanage found out about it being emotion, all of the children excluding tommy felt extreme fear and died within minutes. The nurses and staff also felt extreme fear and sadness for the children. He told me how they all died right in front of his eyes. This experience made him numb to the disease, he seems to be completely blocking that part of his past from his mind. i don’t blame him.

10.07  
Me and tommy make a good team, even though I have to find slightly more food and water, he isn’t too annoying yet and he helps get some of the resources we need. It’s good to have an extra pair of hands and he can fit into smaller gaps to gather things. I think he likes it here with me. 

Roughly 6 years later 

“Daaadddd, I’m back!”, tommy yelled, stomping down the stairs into the basement. “oh, tommy. There you are.” Phil said with a smile, “where’d you go today?” tommy started to speak but Phil interrupted him, “let me guess, the bench?” Tommy grinned sheepishly and nodded, sitting down to the table.  
Tommy had first referred to Phil as Dad a couple of months after meeting him. They just finished dinner when tommy stood up, said “thanks dad”, and then walked off to his room like nothing had happened. But not much had changed in the last 6 years, it was still just tommy and philza, with Ranboo dropping from time to time and then teleporting away without a trace. The room containing the crafting tables was now being used as tommy’s room. He had a small number of belongings from the orphanage and phil had taken him to an abandoned clothes store to get him a bunch of clothes soon after they first met. Phil had been smart and realised that, sooner or later, the clothes store would be trashed by someone and so tommy had showed him a specific shirt (the red and white one) and jeans along with some jackets and shoes which he wanted and they just grabbed that in a bunch of sizes so it would last for years.  
Tommy had grown a lot taller since he met phil 6 years ago and phil had been cutting his hair so it was sort of messy but he didn’t mind. Phil looked almost the same, he had just gained a beard, and Ranboo, to Phil and Tommy’s utter confusion, didn’t seem to have aged a day. He told them it was the enderman in him and they really had no other option than to believe him so they did.  
Phil walked over to join tommy at the table and sat down with two plates of food, potatoes, carrots and bread which they made with wheat they grew in the garden. “so, how was your day phil?” “same old, same old. What about you?” “jumping around roofs and shit like spider man so…same old, same old.” Phil laughed at the boy, ever since he worked out he could run around the roofs surrounding theirs and even jump across to some buildings nearby, that was pretty much all he did. There wasn’t much else to do.  
People hid themselves well, and tommy and phil hadn’t seen a living person other than ranboo in 10 years. They weren’t desperate for human interaction, they had each other, but tommy wished that he could find someone his age to run around on rooftops with. They had seen small things, shadows haunting the darkness of alleyways and yells from far away rooftops, but they could never trace these back to actual people.  
One day, they walked out of the basement and began to wander down the street; they spent most mornings wandering, they’d lived there long enough to know the surrounding location well and long morning walks had begun a routine for them. Their days were always in routine now, there weren’t enough things to do to have any variety from day to day and so they stuck to their clockwork schedule.  
So, what do you do when the routine you so have meticulously lived by for the past six years is disrupted, disrupted in a way you would never expect.  
A person.  
An actual, real life person, with hazel eyes and clear skin, no red veins and a strongly beating heart. He wore a dark beanie, black jeans and a dark yellow knitted jumper. He looked…awful. He was laying face up on the road, stiff as a board, arms stuck to his side like how a soldier would stand. They could see a large-ish black backpack lying next to him, it looked like it was full.  
As they walked closer, they saw a chest rise and fall and a tired face with closed eyes and tear tracks tracing over his grimy face. They thought the man was asleep but, as they walked closer, he sat up abruptly at the sound of their footsteps, turning to look at them with wide eyes.  
“people…?” “yes, we’re people. You alright mate?” tommy questioned, looking at the male in disbelief. He seemed younger than phil, closer to tommy’s age but still an adult. Phil stepped into the conversation, “how…how did you survive?” “i- i- sally.” The man said and looked at the floor.  
Tommy looked at phil in confusion and phil just shrugged at him, equally confused but also intrigued. He didn’t seem evil and phil knew the streets could be a dangerous place. “hey, why don’t you come home with us…” “Wilbur” “Wilbur, why don’t you come home with us, we have a place set up in a basement and you can tell us about yourself, sally and how you got here”.  
Wilbur nodded, stood up and grabbed his bag before walked towards them slowly. Phil and Tommy turned and began to head back to the orphanage.  
Once they arrived back at their shelter and walked inside, Wilbur seemed to cheer up a bit. “this place is nice.” He said with a tired looking smile. “I mean what did you expect, a cardboard box fort?” Tommy said jokingly but then turned to Phil with wide eyes, “I should go make a carboard box fort, i’ll be in my room! bye Wilbur, see you Phil.” And with that, he ran out of the room and into the hallway leading further into the shelter.  
Phil had long ago raided a camping store and had a portable stove with gas, matches and a kettle. He sat down next to it and began to boil some water for tea for himself and Wilbur. The other male watched him as he worked, seemingly curious as to what he was doing. “how are you doing that? the electricity has been shut off for years.” “oh, it’s a gas stove so it just needs the gas in those canisters, no electricity.”  
Wilbur shuffled off his chair and went to sit cross-legged on the floor next to Phil and the little stove, watching the flames under the pot with wide eyes. “we grabbed all the gas cans the camping store had and we’ve gone through less than half of them in all 6 years. We try not to use it too much.” Phil explained.  
Wilbur nodded and started to talk, “sally would’ve liked that, and fundy…” he began to trail off but Phil gave him an encouraging smile and so Wilbur continued, “sally was my wife and fundy was our boy. He went almost immediately but sally’s been here since…two days ago.” Phil gasped and pulled Wilbur into a hug. He knew that wilbur was an adult who had a wife and kid but he felt a sort of paternal nature towards him, just as he did with tommy. “me and sally had just been living off cold food and water since the power stopped. We could grow wheat for bread and get water from the river.”  
Phil nodded, he also used the river as a source of clean water, there was no where else to really get it from. And he had wheat on the roof, maybe he would suggest making some bread with Wilbur in a bit, ater he had rested.  
“sally was always a happy person, she could brighten up a room by just walking into it. Fundy was the same and the news of the disease gave him such fear that he was gone almost immediately. We didn’t know it was contagious at that point but luckily neither of us caught it…I don’t think the boy was around long enough to pass it on”  
Phil watched as a tear rolled down the man’s cheek but he just continued talking, “sally made a big deal about us ‘toughening up’ after that, she wanted to live for him, make him proud by surviving as long as we could. She…she managed it, for so long she managed it. It was like she was a different person, going from so emotional to absolutely nothing, she wouldn’t even tell me she loved me. But, the other day, she found an old photo of fundy and completely lost it, im not sure if she was sad or angry and she wouldn’t let me near enough to tell. She kept telling me it was crazy to think we’d both survive, that it would never happen, she wanted to see fundy and it would be easier to just go now, give me a higher chance of survival as well.”  
“I couldn’t stand the house after the first day, so I started walking. I walked for so long but then I just thought like whats the point, you know? I was living for fundy and sally, they’re both gone and there is no point anymore. Of course, that can’t be an emotion, I was just completely numb, something I’d been pretending to be so hard for six years that it just became my automatic response.”  
“it’s all I want and I can’t even die, I cant go see them. I didn’t even die on that road even though I lay there the whole night. I just got a bit cold and then you brought me here. Thanks for that by the way, the road was kinda uncomfortable.”  
Phil nodded, unsure of what he should say in response to that. “I’m so sorry for your loss. I hope we can make your life a bit better by staying with us. I know it doesn’t seem fair to you that all you want is to be gone but the universe doesn’t seem to want that for you at all. But, maybe, there’s a reason you’re still here. I’m sure you were meant to meet us and I’m sure you’ll love it here, if you choose to stay of course.”  
Wilbur snapped his head up to look at the older man, “i- i can…live here? With you? Thank you- thank you so much.” Phil smiled as the younger man leant into him for another hug. Poor boy, he thought, pretending to feel nothing for so long that it’s just his automatic response to everything.  
Wilbur flinched and they pulled away from the hug as the kettle began to whistle and phil began pouring water into three mugs with tea bags in them. He added some sugar, stirred them, and stood up, walking over to the table and placing the cups down. He saw Wilbur following out to him out of the corner of his eye and bellowed down the hall to tommy. “oi, tommy! Come get some tea.”  
There was a crash and a couple of seconds later tommy came running into the kitchen to see phil and Wilbur. He sat down at the table between the two older boys and offered a small smile to Wilbur, noticing the fresh tears on his cheeks but he returned the smile all the same.  
Tommy looked at phil for clarification on what was going on and phil took a sip of his tea before beginning to explain, “so uh, some stuff happened to Wilbur and long story short he’s living with us now.” Tommy looked at Wilbur in shock and then stated, “you’re my brother.”  
Wilbur looked confused at first but nodded, “uh thanks, what’s your name?” “oh, my name’s tommy and this is Phil, he’s my dad. He adopted me ageesss ago, isn’t that cool?!” Wilbur nodded and smiled, “nice to meet you tommy and phil, thank you for welcoming me into you’re home and I’d love to be your brother.”  
Tommy looked up, “oh, you don’t have to call him Phil, you can just say Dad, he is your dad now.” Wilbur cleared his throat and looked awkwardly at phil. “oh yeah no that’s fine, you can call me dad, glad to have you here son.”  
Yet another lot of tears threatened to spill out his eyes and tommy suddenly stared in shock. “wait a minute, how in the world are you not dead? I mean you’ve cried like ten times already and I’ve known your for half an hour. Isn’t cyring like, an emotional thing?”  
Phil began to explain what Wilbur had told him and Wilbur took the opportunity to drink some of his tea, now that it had cooled down from scalding hot. tommy looked at Wilbur with a mixture of admiration and sadness, “I mean, I’m sorry man. I’m also kinda numb meself, I mean, I watched my whle orphanage die in front of my eyes and im still here.” He crossed his arms and seemed to be proud of himself, but Wilbur just looked sort of concerned.  
Phil began to explain each of their backstories, how they met, how they survived for so long, in terms of the virus but also physical supplies. Wilbur didn’t dare to hope, he knew it was far too late for that, and he knew that hope could destroy people, but for the first time in a long time he didn’t feel utterly helpless, and he wasn’t mad about it.  
After Tommy had downed his cup of tea, he rushed off claiming that he had, “places to be and cardboard houses to build”. Phil watched tommy run back into the corridor before turning to his newly found son, “do you want to rest for now? You must be knackered.” Wilbur nodded gratefully and, placing his empty mug of tea on the table, stood carefully to follow phil in the direction that tommy had just left in. as they walked, phil gave him a sort of tour.  
He has obviously seen the entryway with the door and a bunch of tommy and phil’s shoes and jackets strewn across the floor, but as they walked phil pointed out to him tommy’s room, his own room, and ranboo’s room, where Wilbur would be sleeping for the minute seeing as the mysterious boy was currently nowhere to be found.  
Tommy liked to joke that they had reverted back to the cavemen times, for whenever the basement was too small to do whatever they needed it for, phil would simply take out a shovel and pickaxe and mine through dirt and stone until he had formed a new room, fit for whatever purpose they needed at the time.  
This had only happened twice, the fist being when phil lived alone and neede a storage room and the second being when Ranboo’s visits didn’t stop and phil decided to make him his own room, make it feel more like home.  
Tommy was supposedly the decorator of the new rooms but, sticking to the cavemen idea he had decided to go with, he usually just put up a torch on the wall and called it a day.  
After settling Wilbur down in ranboo’s room, phil set to work in the kitchen, making lunch for him and tommy. They had been extremely lucky with the camping store as, one day while exploring, they had found a truck out in the car park full to the brim with typical camping foods, tinned vegetable, soups, baled beans and other foods which had a long shelf life.  
It had taken them multiple days to lug the food back to their base and intricate organisation (done by phil) to make sure that it would all fit, but even after these ten years, rationing out the food they had meant they still had a good deal of the cans stockpiled.  
Phil pulled down a tin of soup from a shelf and returned to the stove in the kitchen. Pouring away the excess water from making tea, he refilled the saucepan with tomato soup and relit the gas fire underneath.  
After the soup had been heated through, he grabbed a small loaf of bread they had cooked the night before and broke it in half, placing them on a plate and then along with the two bowls of soup, putting them all on the table.  
Phil wandered into the corridor and turned left, into tommy’s room. True to his word, It did appear that he had spent a majority of the morning making a cardboard box fort.  
The boy leapt out the open roof upon hearing his dad’s footsteps, “who goes there?” he brandished a wooden sowrd that phil had crafted years ago to solve the boy’s boredom. He found it sweet that tommy still enjoyed playing with it to this day. There was a small cardboard crown resting on his head, right on the side as if it could fall off at any minute.  
Phil stopped in the doorway, raising his hands in a mock surrender, he was used to this game, “well hello there king tommy,” tommy scoffed and rolled his eyes. “honestly dad, can’t you see I’m a pirate. I literally have a sword.” Phil nodded seriously and replied, “my sincere apologies, I just thought your fort looked rather like a castle and you are wearing a crown.”  
Tommy raised his eyebrows in disbelief and lifted a hand to his head, feeling the cardboard crown. “oh, you’re right. To be honest, i completely forgot I was wearing this and yes I guess my amazing fort slash pirate ship could also double up as a castle,” he nodded at phil, “well then, I guess I am a king, thanks good sir.”


End file.
